Off-year elections are generally dominated by the passionate and the aggrieved. The folks whose anger has been festering for the past two years show up, others don't. That sort of explains why, since 1934, the president's party has averaged a loss of 28 House seats and four Senate seats. It's sorrowful, in part because the anger is cynically stoked by intentional misinformation designed to keep the fires of grievance burning. That's not new - read Madison Grant's
The Passing of the Great Race (1916) with its denunciation of immigrants whose ethnic lobby groups, criminal syndicates, and political machines were driving the white race to extinction - but it has become unremitting. The algorithms of the day pretty much guarantee that once you're spotted at the margins, you'll be fed a steady diet of paranoid fantasies until you finally lose track of reality entirely.
Sadly, the people most put off by the situation - younger people - are the ones with the most to lose, if only because they have the greater part of their lives yet ahead of them. The polling says that something like 70% of older Americans are following the election closely (a predictor of voting) while only 50% of younger Americans are.
Remembrance Day is nigh - this Friday - and the British, especially, will recall the sacrifices of their young to the follies of the old. King Chuck (I think of him as KC-3) will lay a (redesigned with his racing colors) wreath as someone recites Laurence Binyon's poem, "For the Fallen," which reads, in part:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
That same era produced William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming,"
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"The worst are full of passionate intensity." Apparently he'd been following things on social media.
People celebrated the coming of the First World War. Did you know? There was a sense that it would be a cleansing, rejuvenating experience that would free the world of the dead hand of the past that lay so heavily upon it. They were, in a sense, right: the flames that swept the continent did collapse, or terminally weaken, centuries of ruling dynasties and ushered an end, at last, to "The Long Nineteenth Century."
I've read some comparable reflections lately. That we'll finally be freed of "The Long Twentieth Century" and its outmoded structures and assumptions. (There's a
long Foreign Policy essay from October 2022; if you want to skip the history, search for the phrase "four developments" which introduces the section on the end of the long 20th.) As indeed we might. I wonder, though, if we might not be surprised at the cost as our forebears a century past were?
Which is to say, vote. Vote for hope, rather than fear. Vote for the reasonable, not the passionate. And tell the young that the nation can be no better than their efforts make it.
All of which is, needless to say, quite off-topic.
David
Comments
It may be off-topic, but it's terribly important.
And as OJ stated, "terribly important", the vote.
I've not missed a vote since I was first eligible, in 1968.
Lastly, the Michigan political tv ads now amount to slander.
Beyond me why they couldn't be taken to trial for a lawsuit.
obama has used the phrase, "silly season." after Jan 6th, we are way beyond silly. One of the two major parties has become an insurgency. To my mind, the other barely deserves my attention anymore. Hairstyle anti-discrimination Bills? Jayzuz. To say nothing of the fact that the Demublican Machine screwed Bernie, twice.
Yes, we voted. I voted with regret that there isn't a serious alternative. The Repugnants and Demublicans have made sure of that, between themselves. And since Hawaii is so very deep Blue, that "tent" includes all manner of extraneous, foreign stuff--- including Tulsi Gabbard, you will remember--- until the State Demublican Party canceled her membership. Ya.
We must find a way around the Electoral College. Or eliminate it. But that's not going to happen. Here's one option, which I never hear discussed, ever. But many States have already acted upon it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The Long 20th Century Comes to a Shuddering End That's about as accurate and succinct summary of America today as you'll ever find.
Interestingly, the author, DeLong, was one of the deregulate everything architects of the current situation we're in. From Wikipedia:
Some Federal Agencies Aren't Fulfilling Biden's Promise to Give Time Off to Vote
Federal employees are not given "off" time to vote as a general rule. Apparently, the President asked the agencies to give them off time to vote. I'm not sure that the President can do more than suggest; I don't think he can order paid leave to vote, but liberal leave has always been given if possible. The non-compliance for non-essential election day personnel surprised me, however. I wouldn't like to be in the supervisor's shoes about this.
I do think election day should be a day off for as many voters as possible.